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Kai Tave posted:The only reason Mike Mearls even knows who a guy calling himself "The RPGPundit" is is because of his extremely outspoken and public behavior, any given sample of which could easily tell you that someone like the Pundit is maybe not a person you want to be inviting onboard as a consultant for your project. It's not like it's any big secret that the Pundit is basically the RPG scene equivalent of right-wing talk radio, nor is it any massive undertaking to discover that for oneself. There's a big difference between someone who keeps repulsive and/or idiotic views in deep secrecy and someone constantly ranting on his blog about the homofascist feminazi swinegamer agenda to steal all right-thinking real roleplayers' precious bodily fluids.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:19
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Nuns with Guns posted:When did that happen? I'm not shocked at that possibility, but I don't know what would get Pundit all frothy about Monte Cook in particular. Early on during the beginning of 5e development I believe. Pundit sent an open email to Mearls saying that Cook should get his vocal cords removed. quote:Seriously dude, you need to put a muzzle on Monte Cook. Every time the guy opens his mouth about 5e he scares the living poo poo out of the majority of regular old-school gamers. You can see why no one believes anything Mearls said since he didn't fire Pundit on the spot after that.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:34
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The language of your capital-E Enemies. Yep, nooooo way Mearls could have possibly seen the signs there, no sir.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:43
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"The language of our enemies." Oh, Pundit, please, please, change. Like, seriously, it's just a hobby.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:44
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Kai Tave posted:It's not like it's any big secret that the Pundit is basically the RPG scene equivalent of right-wing talk radio Slimnoid posted:Early on during the beginning of 5e development I believe. Pundit sent an open email to Mearls saying that Cook should get his vocal cords removed.   You know, I give Cook a lot of flak for his game design chops like how Numenera is just Cook's 3.5e houserules, but anyone who triggers Tarnowski that hard is all right by me.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:Would like to note that Tarnowski makes non-RPG-related, political posts in some libertarian rag, so he literally is just a right-wing pundit now. Well, they say to do what you love.
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Apr 15, 2016 03:54
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I originally thought Cook was a lazy, lovely designer but I've come to believe that his creativity outpaces his mechanics design. Before Numenera came out, he listed a dozen or so design goals. They were all good! He described what he wanted from his next project and it was all a lot of current-generation, forward-leaning stuff. The game that came out was a letdown, but it seemed more like he just wasn't able to engineer the game he wanted - not that he wanted a rehash of previous works.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:23
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Slimnoid posted:Early on during the beginning of 5e development I believe. Pundit sent an open email to Mearls saying that Cook should get his vocal cords removed. It's been a while since grogs.txt and I apparently forgot just how much of a fucklord pundit was. And I wasn't exactly a fan of Mearls before, but wow this is pretty clearly painting him as either an rear end in a top hat or an idiot. Hardcore gaming delenda est.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:27
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moths posted:I originally thought Cook was a lazy, lovely designer but I've come to believe that his creativity outpaces his mechanics design. My problems with Monte Cook are that A). he seems chronically incapable of escaping the D&D mold with all its attendant issues, such as a seeming inability to not make a game where spellcasters rule over everyone else, and B). his inability to engineer the game he wants is somewhat less forgivable in an environment when there are plenty of examples to draw upon for inspiration of those exact things he wants, yet somehow he always seems to miss the point. Being a game designer, or an anything designer, isn't all about coming up with radical new never-before-seen ideas all on your own, it's about understanding other peoples' stuff, what does and doesn't work about it and why. I don't get the impression from any of Cook's recent projects that he's actually capable of that sort of understanding. I don't necessarily think he's lazy per se in the sense that he's just phoning it in, but I also don't think he's that great a game designer either.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:32
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Asimo posted:
To be fair to you, he's been pushed to further and further realms of irrelevancy now that his fuckery has been exposed for what it is and spread around to several corners of the internet. Pissing in the face of every major RPG developer and made enemies of Drivethru certainly didn't help him any. Really, the reason he's a raging shitlord is because without it he's nothing.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:42
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moths posted:I originally thought Cook was a lazy, lovely designer but I've come to believe that his creativity outpaces his mechanics design. I've read through his Book of Experimental Might and there's some glimpses of insight into it, like: 1. Why do we have save-or-die spells? I just make them do (lots of) damage 2. I put back all the stat-boosting spells like Cat's Grace into a 1 hr/caster-level timer. If you'd like, you can also do something like the spellcaster writes off that spell slot completely for the sake of keeping up the spell full-time on their selected target, because 1 min/level in the 3.5 revision was just lovely book-keeping 3. Why do spell levels only go up to 9, completely divorced from every other level range? I rewrote spell levels so that a level 5 spellcaster learns their first level 5 spell at level 5, and spell levels go up to 20. 4. I made it so that healing spells no longer cost spell slots. Instead, you can only be magically healed a limited number of times per day (I don't know how much people knew about Healing Surges prior to their release, but this book and concept came out a couple of months before the 4th edition core) 5. I made it so that a character can spend THEIR action to touch the Cleric (or Druid or Paladin) and receive healing from them, so the Cleric doesn't have to healbot 6. I made it so that Knock just gives the Wizard a (large) bonus to their Open Lock check, and Arcane Lock locks the thing with a higher DC than if it were normally-physically locked. And at the end of the day it's still just a book of houserules for D&D 3rd Edition, and the "martial rituals" thing he tried to pull off with Arcana Evolved wasn't anywhere near as boundary-pushing (or strong) as Tome of Battle, but you got the sense that he at least knew what the larger issues were with the game.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:51
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I wonder how much damage g.txt did in popularizing these shitasses and giving venue to their garbage opinions. They certainly thrived on attention, and I felt a sort of victory after seeing Tarnawski's name without actually recalling who he was or what nonsense he peddled.Kai Tave posted:My problems with Monte Cook are that A). he seems chronically incapable of escaping the D&D mold with all its attendant issues, such as a seeming inability to not make a game where spellcasters rule over everyone else, and B). his inability to engineer the game he wants is somewhat less forgivable in an environment when there are plenty of examples to draw upon for inspiration of those exact things he wants, yet somehow he always seems to miss the point. That's a really good way to put it. While Cook wasn't be capable of escaping D&D's gravity well, I respect him for at least attempting to. I hold Cook in more esteem than someone like Mearls who refused that anything existed outside of the comfy D20 blanket fort.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:55
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moths posted:While Cook wasn't be capable of escaping D&D's gravity well, I respect him for at least attempting to. I hold Cook in more esteem than someone like Mearls who refused that anything existed outside of the comfy D20 blanket fort.
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Apr 15, 2016 04:58
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I honestly think Cook left the Next team because they were actively hostile towards innovation. The only thing really toted as "new" was dis/advantage, which was basically the 4e bard gimmick minus the bard. Early drafts of the playtest document were literally cut and pasted rules from different D&D editions.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:01
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Cook is at least much better off not being involved with Wizards of the Coast. As far as I can tell, he's much more successful on his own than he would be if he hitched his wagon to WotC or Paizo.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:03
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moths posted:I wonder how much damage g.txt did in popularizing these shitasses and giving venue to their garbage opinions. They certainly thrived on attention, and I felt a sort of victory after seeing Tarnawski's name without actually recalling who he was or what nonsense he peddled. Most of my disdain for Mearls stems entirely from the halfassed shitshow of Next's development, "open playtest" and all. Even back when he was writing Iron Heroes I always felt that Mearls was a guy who had decent ideas but the actual mechanical execution wasn't super tight...Iron Heroes itself is full of wonky poo poo and badly in need of errata and an overhaul...and I think it's pretty telling that when he took over 4E that there was a notable decline in quality. Heroes of Shadow was his first big book in charge and it was pretty bad and a big waste of potential. But the development parade of Next, from the meaningless puff piece "does this feel like D&D?" questionnaires to the steady rollback of anything that might give Fighters fun toys over successive iterations to promises they obviously were never going to keep right on up to bringing Tarnowski and Zak S on as credited consultants to court the internet shithead demographic, that all pretty much cemented for me that Mearls isn't just some poor guy struggling under the weight of the crown but actually bad at his job and lazy and maybe kind of an rear end in a top hat himself.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:09
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Hey but speaking of bad game designers making D&D knockoffs, what's up with Sean K. Reynolds' better-than-D&D Kickstarter, did that ever get off the ground or what?
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Apr 15, 2016 05:10
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Kai Tave posted:Heroes of Shadow was his first big book in charge and it was pretty bad and a big waste of potential.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:17
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moths posted:I honestly think Cook left the Next team because they were actively hostile towards innovation. The only thing really toted as "new" was dis/advantage, which was basically the 4e bard gimmick minus the bard. Early drafts of the playtest document were literally cut and pasted rules from different D&D editions. He arguably lost too, despite the effort. Wizards are the only "controller" class in the corebook specifically so they could be unique and special (even if others got added later), and basically once Mearls fully took the helm there was new wizard subclasses, reams of new wizard powers, and noticeably nerfed martial classes in every goddamn supplement after.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is all hindsight coming from me, but the Iron Heroes Assassin used the same mechanic as the 4e Essentials Assassin, and tokens/Shroud was just as bad a mechanic in either. One of the most telling Mike Mearls moments I remember was some Rule of Three column where someone basically asked "Hey, the original 4E Assassin class has some mechanical issues, how 'bout that?" and Mearls' response was basically "yeah, we're aware of the issue, I guess you could Ask Your GM™ to houserule it like so," and all I could think at the time was hey Mike, you know you're literally the guy in charge of D&D right? If you know it's broken then how about you fuckin fix it? What do you need, permission? It's an entirely digital class too! No books to invalidate, you could get someone on this and probably have it done in a week. Nope, too much work.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:26
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Kai Tave posted:Hey but speaking of bad game designers making D&D knockoffs, what's up with Sean K. Reynolds' better-than-D&D Kickstarter, did that ever get off the ground or what? If you meant The Five Moons RPG, not really? But if you meant Goody White's Folk Magic then at least that exists.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:40
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I see Mearls as a guy who absolutely needs validation. He kept progressively worse company to ensure a steady fix, but in doing so alienates the regular gamers he desperately wants to to fit in with. I realize this is some armchair psychology bullshit, but in his documented behavior the only constant is that he's evenly desperate in trying to fit in. He came up with MC KILLZALOT for the web comics guys, he got hateful when he was consulting with the grogstars, and "Ask your DM" is a naked appeal to DM authoritarianism. It's a trait that could have made him an outstanding team-member, but instead a goddamn loving dismal leader. Those dumb feedback polls make a lot more sense in the context of Mearls asking What do you want from me? instead of What elements make a good game? He was a waiter when he needed to be a chef. Mearls's focused on taking orders from "the community" which was hemorrhaging earnest playtesters - leaving only a sub-sub faction of brand-loyalists on the toxic official forums.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:40
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Cascade Jones posted:If you meant The Five Moons RPG, not really? But if you meant Goody White's Folk Magic then at least that exists. From the March 2015 Five Moons Kickstarter Update posted:To tide you over a little bit longer, here's how I'm currently planning on dealing with the "I want to play a monk who focuses on unarmed combat and doesn't use weapons at all." This allows you to get the benefits of using weapons without requiring you to actually carry or wield the weapons. Things to take away from this: 1). In Five Moons, certain subsets of feats are called "cronks" 2). Sean K. Reynolds still can't Monk. 3). People paid him $36k for this.
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Apr 15, 2016 05:53
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Cascade Jones posted:If you meant The Five Moons RPG, not really? The kickstarter campaign was back in October 2014 and it's somehow still in its playtesting phase? Yeah, okay, that's not Far West bad, but... It still seems rather embarrassing for a D20 knock-off by an "industry professional."
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Apr 15, 2016 05:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is all hindsight coming from me, but the Iron Heroes Assassin used the same mechanic as the 4e Essentials Assassin, and tokens/Shroud was just as bad a mechanic in either. Heroes of Shadow had the Executioner Assassin, AKA the one that didn't require absurd shroud bookkeeping. Problem being the Executioner was loving broken with any MBA hybrid because of poor essentials design.
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Apr 15, 2016 06:33
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Decided to check back in on our old friend GMSGMS posted:Benjamin-- We've got a new excuse! Angry Backer posted:I never said I was entitled to details about your life. You're trying to distract from the real issue, which is excuse after excuse after excuse after excuse. We've all been remarkably tolerant of your "professionalism" and keep you doing the same things, over and over and over, but expect different results. Another Backer posted:How do I go about getting a refund? GMS posted:Joseph -- Drop me a message either via the Kickstarter Message system, or via email to gms@adamantentertainment.com Get hosed GMS.
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Apr 15, 2016 06:34
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Kurieg posted:Heroes of Shadow had the Executioner Assassin, AKA the one that didn't require absurd shroud bookkeeping. My favorite part of Essentials design was how they had to errata that one Hexblade multiclass feat out of existence. You know, the one that let you poach the Hexblade's magic lightsaber? Because they realized that was the only compelling reason to play a Hexblade and if you let anyone just pick it up with a feat that the class was pretty much pointless. Good times. Of course then they left the Vampire MC feat in which pretty much made playing a Vampire pointless (and incredibly boring as well) so oh well.
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Apr 15, 2016 06:38
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Get hosed GMS. Has he actually provided any tangible proof to his backers that he's any closer to being done then when the KS ended so many years ago? Like a pre-printer draft, or an art free rules test, or hell even a quick start demo or something?
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Apr 15, 2016 06:43
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that's hilarious cause i don't need a feat to give a player a magic lightsaber
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Apr 15, 2016 06:45
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ManMythLegend posted:Has he actually provided any tangible proof to his backers that he's any closer to being done then when the KS ended so many years ago? Like a pre-printer draft, or an art free rules test, or hell even a quick start demo or something? He's shown a few incomplete pdf chapters, the last one being like a year ago. And some "artwork" of backers that he ran photoshop filters over, but as far as I know thats it.
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Apr 15, 2016 06:47
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Kai Tave posted:My favorite part of Essentials design was how they had to errata that one Hexblade multiclass feat out of existence. You know, the one that let you poach the Hexblade's magic lightsaber? Because they realized that was the only compelling reason to play a Hexblade and if you let anyone just pick it up with a feat that the class was pretty much pointless. Good times. Don't forget Eldritch blow, which was WOTC realizing that casters should have access to decent MBAs without needing to pay a feat tax for it.... without them realizing that they also shouldn't need to give up the only spell that warlocks have universal feat support for. gradenko_2000 posted:I think this is a better way to put it, yeah. I was thinking about this, and he definitely tried to make a more balanced spellcasting system with Monte Cook's World of Darkness, but the problem with the area of effect rules and the fact that damage was one of the cheapest spellcasting components meant that a level 5 wizard could pretty reliably cast Disintigrate for most of the day but a single casting of Control Weather would be all but impossible for anyone but the highest level wizards to cast, and even if he did he wouldn't be casting anything else that day with a -120 modifier to his cast roll.
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Apr 15, 2016 06:48
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Elfgames posted:that's hilarious cause i don't need a feat to give a player a magic lightsaber I mean to be fair it was less a matter of reskinning and more a matter of "oh hey, Lady of the White Well pact gives you a +2/1d12 radiant MBA vs. Reflex, why yes I'll take that for a feat please and thank you."
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Apr 15, 2016 06:54
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I guess but that's not outlandish as a normal magical itemand if you get that at level one it's pretty broken so ya'know..
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Apr 15, 2016 06:57
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Elfgames posted:I guess but that's not outlandish as a normal magical itemand if you get that at level one it's pretty broken so ya'know.. It's a bit more complicated than that. It was a cha attack, sometimes against a NAD, and it counted as both an mba and an arcane spell. It was very good for any class with a cha primary or secondary, and completely outstripped blade channeller for any sorcerer who wasn't already using their multiclass. Iirc there is also a rogue paragon path that keyed off of arcane spells that would have loved it.
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Apr 15, 2016 07:06
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Elfgames posted:I guess but that's not outlandish as a normal magical itemand if you get that at level one it's pretty broken so ya'know.. Always-radiant MBAs that target a non-armor defense is actually a fair chunk better than a lot of magic items in 4E will get you, it's perfectly designed to be cheesed to hell and back too. You would think, then, that the people in charge of 4E which was a fairly known quantity at the time that things like the Hexblade were being concocted would have had the knowledge, sense, or foresight to realize that either A). allowing someone to poach things like this might be a bad idea in the first place instead of making feats and then frantically backpedaling or B). might not have given a Hexblade variant a super stupid good version of the lightsaber (other pacts targeted AC and didn't have damage types that were nearly as exploitable, radiant damage being easily abused was like 4E charop 101 by this point). Looking back at things now, the Hexblade was part of the trend that started with Essentials of Essential-ized classes largely being built around spamming one or two buffed basic-ish attacks over and over, with some sort of encounter kicker here and there...oh, and Wizards, who were virtually unchanged from standard 4E. Just like how you can look at late 3.X books and see the earliest inspirations for what would eventually turn into 4E, looking at Essentials with its emphasis on "I swing my sword/spam my eldritch blast" class design peppered with bland passives like stances and the only way to get any sort of real mechanical or tactical depth being to play a full spellcaster of some sort, you can connect the dots from there to Next.
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Apr 15, 2016 07:08
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Kai Tave posted:Of course then they left the Vampire MC feat in which pretty much made playing a Vampire pointless (and incredibly boring as well) so oh well. Kai Tave posted:Looking back at things now, the Hexblade was part of the trend that started with Essentials of Essential-ized classes largely being built around spamming one or two buffed basic-ish attacks over and over, with some sort of encounter kicker here and there...oh, and Wizards, who were virtually unchanged from standard 4E. Just like how you can look at late 3.X books and see the earliest inspirations for what would eventually turn into 4E, looking at Essentials with its emphasis on "I swing my sword/spam my eldritch blast" class design peppered with bland passives like stances and the only way to get any sort of real mechanical or tactical depth being to play a full spellcaster of some sort, you can connect the dots from there to Next. At least Vampire and Elementalist and whatever still got daily powers, the martial classes didn't even get those. 
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Apr 15, 2016 08:08
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Asimo posted:... being another good example of the "spam melee basics, maybe modified with your one single encounter power" setup. I have no goddamn idea why Mearls pushed classes this way, I mean with the martial classes it was obvious (to make them lovely enough to be a ~newbie choice~ so you could feel superior by taking a wizard instead) but they basically used the same scheme even for a lot of non-martial classes. Because it's easy. Again, Essentials was a great lead up to 5e: the developers were tired of developing, so they took the easiest path they could, almost every time, and the less work the better.
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Apr 15, 2016 08:15
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That makes a depressing amount of sense, yes. I guess it's not really a secret that making a 4e class was a load more work than a 3e class where you could just throw some skill bonus or minor power thing every 2-3 levels and not give a gently caress.
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Apr 15, 2016 08:38
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Asimo posted:That makes a depressing amount of sense, yes. I guess it's not really a secret that making a 4e class was a load more work than a 3e class where you could just throw some skill bonus or minor power thing every 2-3 levels and not give a gently caress. I recall at least a couple 3rd party 4E content creators calling it quits for basically this reason. Also the fact that 4E's degree of system transparency made it much more immediately clear when someone hadn't bothered to do their homework and was just trying to slapdash something together and call it a day. Eventually enough people picked up sufficient system mastery with 3.X stuff that they could tell the good from the bad, but initially it was much less easy to discern at a glance.
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Apr 15, 2016 08:41
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Halloween Jack posted:You'd think that if a potential consultant runs his own forum, you'd at least glance at it and take notice if the guy is seriously spouting fascist conspiracy theories. I can readily believe that Mearls failed to do this out of sheer laziness. It's not even his own forum. Tarnowski has a column on some semi-MRA reactionist website, I think it's run by Alexander Macris? (Macris is the head of the Escapist, and also wrote ACKS the OSR clone.) Slimnoid posted:Going by what we've seen as him as a DM: yeah, probably. It's notable that Mearls used to have a pretty popular gaming blog up until he became D&D lead, I think? it was very popular with grogs, even as he wrote 3e/4e, and it's just classic Mearls from what I looked through of it. It was an interesting look to see Mearls be on the other side of "ask your DM" and see him talk about how he directly runs games (boring). Falstaff posted:The kickstarter campaign was back in October 2014 and it's somehow still in its playtesting phase? Yeah, okay, that's not Far West bad, but... It still seems rather embarrassing for a D20 knock-off by an "industry professional." Hey, come on. I don't hold SKR as being that great a designer. However, considering a common problem with a lot of RPGs is the lack of (or lip-service only) playtesting, taking some time isn't a bad thing if he's spending it right. Regarding Monte Cook: I think it's notable that what Cook has been acclaimed for traditionally is his setting/narrative work, not his systems work. His highest, most popular points (Planescape, Dark*Matter, Ptolus, Numenera and so on) have all been popular for their unusual, well-developed settings, and that design made him notable in the first place through his work on Planescape. What did get him a rules reputation was working on the 3e design team with rules design people like Skip Williams and Rob Heinsoo, and then he wrote the 3.0 DMG. If you don't remember, the 3.0 DMG was the thinnest of the core rulebooks, and largely an accretion of DMing resources from years of D&D. (And NOT other sources, it took until the 3.5 DMGII for the usual tap Robin D. Laws thing to take place) It didn't actually have much systems design in it, in comparison to the PHB and the MM. His "rules master" reputation spun out of that one credit and that he was very very vocal online when not many designers were. So, yeah, Cook is a good designer - for writing settings, and supplements. Numenera is a great setting, and a terrible rules system, and that's a problem, but not an indictment of him. Not all designers are good at the same things, and that's fine. As an example, Ed Greenwood stopped doing anything with rules in 3e, I'm pretty sure.
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Apr 15, 2016 11:04
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